OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry (also referred to as OTel) is an open standard that is created by CNCF. OpenTelemetry includes an open source observability framework that is made up with a collection of tools, APIs, and SDKs.

Instana supports all OpenTelemetry signals.

• Support for OpenTelemetry Traces is GA. OpenTelemetry and Instana AutoTrace spans can be combined for continuous mixed tracing.
• Support for OpenTelemetry Metrics is in public preview and is available to all customers.
• Support for OpenTelemetry Logs is in public preview. Contact your customer service representative to get preview access to this functionality.

Instana can seamlessly integrate with OpenTelemetry and supports many commonly-used definitions in the OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions, such as resource attributes, span attributes, metrics attributes, and log attributes.

OpenTelemetry data is sent to Instana by using the following methods that follow open standards and the implementation is maintained by the OpenTelemetry community and the Instana product:

• Data is sent to the Instana agent in OTLP format. Then, the Instana agent forwards the data to the Instana backend. For more information, see Sending OpenTelemetry data to the Instana agent.

• Data is sent directly to the Instana backend in OTLP format. For more information, see Sending OpenTelemetry data to the Instana backend.

You can also forward the OpenTelemetry data to an Instana agent or Instana backend by using the OpenTelemetry Collector.